Lookin’ Like a Fool: Wearing Saggy Pants in Tennessee has Become Illegal

Standards – and pants – have been slipping in the Tennessee city of Pikeville, where the mayor has decided things have gotten as low as they can go.

Mayor Phil Cagle is the author of an ordinance that will soon see anyone wearing their pants ‘more than three inches below the top of the hips’ fined for public indecency.

Pikeville is just the latest place in the U.S. to take issue with where young men position their trousers.

Two in Louisiana, Jefferson Davis and Terrebonne Parish have passed ordinances in recent months banning the public wearing of saggy pants with hefty fines for those who choose not to belt up, and others have followed suit in Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi.

So why all the palaver over pants?

‘All I know is we just don’t want them running around half-naked on our streets,’ Cagle told the Times Free Press.

‘That’s the bottom line.’

The City Council of Pikesville unanimously approved the ordinance, which will require anyone guilty letting their pants hang ‘more than three inches below the top of the hips (crest of the ilium)’ to pay a fine of $25 for the first offense, and $50 for each offense thereafter.